The world’s favorite lesbian calendar is back.
Antwerp-based fine art photographer Cristina de la Madera has done it again with her L-calendar for 2016. These beautiful, sensual, black-and-white images of gorgeous and physically expressive lesbians are presented in a wall calendar that is, as far as de la Madera knows, the only one of its kind that features female couples.
L-calendar celebrates 10 years of production this year.
L-calendar was launched in 2006 at the request of bookshops in Western Europe whose customers wanted more fine art portrayals of same-sex-attracted women. De la Madera was guided by an overarching theme, “tenderness and love between female couples.”
If you’re wondering where she finds the seemingly perfect models for these images, the answer is: in real lesbian life. “I find my models by putting out a call on Facebook,” says de la Madera.
While her hope each year is to attract a diverse range of body types, backgrounds, and ages, she found that 2016 yielded a surplus of young, feminine women eager to be photographed. If 2015, at least in America, seemed to be the year of the genderqueer, and androgyny, the women in de la Madera’s world seem to have expressed a different bias.
The shoot took place in a fine art photography gallery, a hotel in Antwerp, and a nightclub for women.
“The calendar gives very much an idea of my personal life, of my friends and the people I know,” says de la Madera. The themes for each month often follow the rhythms and patterns of her own life—for example, her romantic relationship, wedding, and pregnancy.
“So you could say it’s a reflection of my own life.”